Implicit Costs: The Price of Ease

Is modern society making us obsolete?

Advancements in tech have been making our lives easier and more comfortable than ever before.

With this, we’ve seen the popularization of the “do less, have more” Instagram lifestyle. It’s not just that more people want to work from home, run online businesses, and have more free time; they want to do it in the easiest way possible. Some of the most popular videos I see on social media are “how to make money with 0 investment,” “how to make fast,” and “make money the easy way.”

Of course, I’m all for tech. It’s allowed us to progress exponentially in important fields like medicine, construction, and science, which has improved the quality of our lives across multiple domains:

We can now connect with almost anyone in the world, leveraging opportunities that previous generations couldn’t dream of. Life is less dangerous than it used to be. We’re able to do a lot more stuff, a lot more effectively, in a much faster time. And we’re able to enjoy greater comforts.

There’s only so much the human mind and body can do. Even 10 of the best mathematicians in the world are no match for your average joe with a calculator. You could take 100 of the strongest men in the world and they wouldn’t outlift a skinny 15-year-old kid in a crane.

The advancements in plastic surgery have also been amazing. The level to which we can treat deformities — both at birth and caused by accidents later in life — has done wonders for the self-esteem of countless people around the world.

Creating content used to be reserved for a select few that were born in the right place at the right time. And even then, their reach was extremely narrow compared to now, where content creators from anywhere in the world can work full time, making fortunes. They also have a more diverse range of vehicles for creating content.

The development of web 1 and 2 have been amazing for humanity. And from what I can see, with the upcoming integration of web 3 and its blockchain tech, we’re about to see a lot more value added to the world.

Although I’m not anti-tech, I do see some potential Issues tech is causing that can be easy to overlook.

Firstly, while making our lives easier, it’s also making us redundant. I don’t just mean redundant in the sense that machines and AI are going to replace hundreds of millions of jobs; I mean redundant in the sense that we aren’t able to do the things we used to.

We’re becoming a lot dumber. In this digital age, the average attention span of a human being is now 8 seconds, which is less than that of a goldfish.

This isn’t just due to mindless scrolling on social media, but just tech in general. Because so much is done for us by tech, we don’t have to use our minds as much.

You know what they say: if you don’t use it, you ……?

Even apps like Google Maps, although they’re a complete lifesaver, I’ve noticed that I don’t remember directions as well on my own. I probably couldn’t read or memorize a real map half as well as my dad, or his dad.

The expansion of e-commerce with same-day/next day delivery at little to no cost in addition to the millions of products that are available is great, but it’s also causing cognitive issues like informational overload.

In his book, The Fallacy of Choice, Barry Schwartz writes about how all the different options we have in the modern era lead to paralysis by analysis, which makes it harder to choose and can be overwhelming mentally. Barry states that all these options lead to less freedom, not more.

In addition, you have the fact that people are a lot less patient than they used to be. I’ve noticed this having run an eCommerce store for the past few years and working in the services industry.

People expect the highest quality products as quickly as possible. Anything less is a disappointment.

The problem here is that we need patience to enjoy life. If you’re not able to enjoy things when there are mishaps or delays, then you’re often going to be experiencing reactive, negative emotions because; well, this is life, and shit happens all the time.

They say “patience is a virtue.” And coming into 2022, it looks like we’re running low.

This lack of patience, coupled with the overstimulated, dopamine addicted minds we’ve developed through tech makes it more difficult to enjoy goods and services. It makes everything seem like a means to an end, like a race, rather than experiences to be enjoyed for what they are.

It’s amazing that we can automate large parts of our lives with tech. Even thinking has been automated to a degree with algorithms that tell you what you want next, so you don’t even need to think about it yourself. Things like Grammarly and predictive text have stopped me from looking like an idiot countless times. But the problem is, too much of this can make us lazy.

You might think, so what? If we have the tech to do all this stuff for us, including our thinking, then we don’t need to be as hardworking as previous generations. Smart work, not hard work right?

That’s true, to a degree, but it depends on how far we take it. When you look at the developments in the tech industry and AI specifically, it seems pretty evident that AI and computers are going to end up automating a large number of the tasks humans do today. On the surface, this seems great: It’s a lot more efficient and it frees up lots of time.

But in order to actually develop as humans, we need to do things. We need to think, act, and interact with the world in a way that allows us to learn and grow.

We see this with zoo animals. When they’re taken out of the wild and kept in enclosures, they don’t develop the same way that they do in the wild. In the wild they hunt, they explore territories, assessing where to settle; they interact with the environment in a way that allows them to develop their senses, their bodies, their intuition, their killer instincts.

Granted, the zoo is a lot safer, and the animals there probably live a lot longer, but at what cost?

Now imagine we took it a step further and kept those animals in cages without letting them out at all. Gave them everything they needed without the need for them to do anything. That would be maximal convenience, but what would those animals look like?

What happens if technology continues to automate our lives, making things easier and easier so we do less and less. Things may be more efficient, safer, and better from an economic utility perspective. But what would we look like as human beings?

What would our attention spans look like? What would our characters’ be like? What would our bodies look like? What would our intuition and sense of connection with the world be like? Would we still be fully developed human beings, or like the zoo animals, would we be a shell of our potential selves?

Convenience is great, but after a certain point the pros might start to outweigh the cons. It’s also important not to miss the point. We’re not living just for convenience and ease. It’s a means to an end, not the end itself.

So, how we use these resources is very important. If we use the extra time, convenience and ease provided by tech to put our attention on higher things that improve our lives, allowing us to develop ourselves as full human beings, we can enrich our lives and avoid becoming obsolete.

If you liked this article, every week I unpack the deeper meaning behind one commonly misunderstood principle.

Get it sent straight to your inbox every Sunday and attack the week with insight. (no spam)